Black Sparkle Space Play Dough

Make some jet black, sparkly play dough for space, robot, or moon related imaginary play times!

How cool is this play dough?! We have made it for a friend’s birthday party today and I’m loving the silver sparkles combined with the jet black dough. It would be fabulous for using during a topic about space or a science investigation about rocks and minerals. I thought exploring it using metallic objects like these pictured would go well with the reflective nature of it too! How much fun would it be to press the dough through a garlic press to make black sparkle string?! I think we need to make some for ourselves too!

Here’s the recipe (which takes all of 4 minutes!):

* 2 cups of flour* 1/2 cup of salt* 1.5 cups of boiling water (important that it is straight from kettle)* 2 tbsp oil* 2 tbsp cream of tartar (or a squeeze of lemon juice)* a few drops of glycerine to add extra shine and stretch (this is my own special ingredient!)* black food colouring or 1 tbsp of black powder paint* silver glitter

Method:

Mix it all together in a bowl until it starts to come together. Then knead it for a few minutes and add the colouring and glitter. It will be very hot at first! It comes together beautifully and will last for months in a zip-loc bag in the cupboard. It will last a good few months before drying out.

See my Play Dough Recipes tab (under the title at the top of the page) for MANY ideas of wonderful things to do with play dough!

I made this with red/blue/green glitter for last years Bonfire Night… it looked like fireworks when it was rolled out! Black food colouring is easy to find in the shops, you need quite a bit of it though, otherwise it turns out grey.

This looks fantastic, I’ve got the black food colouring, just need some more silver glitter and I can give it a try. We tried your fab chocolate box playdough idea today It was definitely a hit, thank you!

Lucy that sounds wonderful! There’s something about adding glitter to dough that just brings it to life a bit! And I agree about needing quite a lot of colouring. I find that with all colours- very pastel shades unless you use half a bottle!

I used the Wilton and the green eventually gets darker. I ended up using the entire jar. (1 oz) it is pretty black. But my hands are now red and so is the counter. Bleach cleaned up our counter, I just have to keep an eye on it with the kids and keep it on a mat. Otherwise I love the idea of the black. Hope my boys like it.

Ahh Laura, I don’t know how to help, sorry!! I used Silver Spoon colouring (a UK brand) and probably did need 1/3rd of a small bottle. I saw someone else try out my dough and she had to use half! I am not familiar with Wilton but it sounds like it has a greenish dye for its base. If in doubt add more and more, but you may need to compensate with more flour. Hope it works!

I am about to make a second batch of this to give to my little boy’s friend’s birthday, after it was a HUGE success at his own in the summer (which still hasn’t dried out!). The best home made play dough ever, in my opinion;-)

We made black sparkly dough using natural black food colouring and edible glitter, and added strawberry flavouring to make it smell yummy too (but safe if eaten by younger siblings).